of ultimate extinction." It was now, as it
seemed, proposed to abandon that principle and assume it to be good or
at least indifferent. If _that_ principle were accepted there was
nothing to prevent the institution being introduced not only into the
free territories but into the Free States. And indeed the reasoning of
Taney's judgment, though not the judgment itself, really seemed to point
to such a conclusion.

Lincoln soon became the leader of the Illinois Republicans, and made
ready to match himself against Douglas when the "Little Giant" should
next seek re-election. Meanwhile a new development of the Kansas affair
had split the Democratic Party and ranged Senator Douglas and President
Buchanan on opposite sides in an open quarrel. The majority of the
population now settled in Kansas was of Northern origin, for the
conditions of life in the North were much more favourable to emigration
into new lands than those of the slave-owning States. Had a free ballot
been taken of the genuine settlers there would certainly have been a
large majority against Slavery. But in the scarcely disguised civil war
into which the competition for Kansas had developed, the Slave-State
party had the support of bands of "border ruffians" from the
neighbouring State, who could appear as citizens of Kansas one day and
return to their homes in Missouri the next. With such aid that party
succeeded in silencing the voices of the Free State men while they held
a bogus Convention at Lecompton, consisting largely of men who were not
really inhabitants of Kansas at all, adopted a Slave Constitution, and
under it applied for admission to the Union. Buchanan, who, though a
Northerner, was strongly biassed in favour of the Slavery party, readily
accepted this as a _bona fide_ application, and recommended Congress to
accede to it. Douglas was much better informed as to how things were
actually going in Kansas, and he felt that if the Lecompton Constitution
were acknowledged his favourite doctrine of Popular Sovereignty would be
justly covered with odium and contempt. He therefore set himself against
the President, and his personal followers combined with the Republicans
to defeat the Lecompton proposition.

The struggle in Illinois thus became for Douglas a struggle for
political life or death. At war with the President and with a large
section of his party, if he could not keep a grip on his own State his
political career was over. Nor did he underra